Justice Ranjan Gogoi took oath as the 46th Chief Justice of India. He succeeds Justice Dipak Misra who retired on October 1. Justice Gogoi was administered the oath of office by President Ram Nath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, former prime ministers Manmohan Singh and HD Deve Gowda were among the dignitaries who were present at Rashtrapati Bhavan’s Darbar Hall for the ceremony.
Justice Ranjan Gogoi, 63, is the first person from the northeast to become the Chief Justice of India. He will have a tenure of a little over 13 months and would retire on November 17, 2019.
Justice Gogoi is known to be a soft-spoken but tough judge. He was among the four judges who, in January, criticized Chief Justice Misra in a rare press conference and accused him of misusing his role of assigning cases as the Supreme Court’s Master of the Roster.
Born on November 18, 1954, Justice Gogoi was enrolled as an advocate in 1978. He practiced in the Gauhati High Court on constitutional, taxation and company matters. He was appointed as a Permanent Judge of the Gauhati High Court on February 28, 2001. He was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on September 9, 2010.
He was appointed as Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court on February 12, 2011. He was elevated to the Supreme Court on April 23, 2012.
